Chapter Fourteen
The cops couldn’t decide whether to arrest us or not and kept us standing around until Stallings got there.
John Stallings had been the detective lieutenant in charge of CPD’s Special Investigations division.
It had taken the city a year, but they’d made a rare excellent decision, and in the wake of the Battle of Chicago, SI had been given more funding and manpower, and as a result Stallings had been promoted to captain.
“O captain, my captain,” I said, when Stallings came walking up. He was a tall man nearing retirement age who managed to look dignified and a little slouchy at the same time. His hair was more silver though his moustache was still dark.
“Dresden.” He sighed. He took a look at the Blue Beetle, now repositioned to the roadside, and then at me. “You’re driving the Bug again, huh?”
“I like the classics.”
“Cholera is classic,” Stallings said sourly. “Consumption is classic. Doesn’t mean they’re good.”
He gestured for me to walk with him, and I did.
“What are you doing with that asshole pimp?” Stallings said.
“Oh, you know Tripp,” I noted.
“I was in Vice before I got moved to SI,” Stallings said. “Used to bust him regular. I was happy when he got sent away for time.”
“Yeah, well. He’s trying to go straight.”
Stallings snorted.
“No kidding, John,” I said. “I’m trying to help him do it.”
He puffed up his moustache skeptically. “What happened here?”
We were far enough away from the others that I could talk. “Some kind of sorcerer, in league with a demon. Maybe bad.”
“How bad?”
Start possessing everyone and everything in the city bad, I thought, but I somehow didn’t think it would be wise to share that one. “I don’t think your guys could handle it.”
Stallings eyed me. He was a smart guy. He knew the limits of CPD and their gear when it came to the supernatural world. And, to be fair, there were plenty of threats they absolutely could handle. I just didn’t think Emilio and Lurker fell into that category.
“You and the Brotherhood helped us out plenty with the ghouls after the battle,” he said quietly. “Saved a lot of lives. And we were willing to look the other way about a lot of things because it was an emergency, and we needed all the help we could get.”
As I remembered it, Stallings had asked for my help and I’d given it, but I didn’t want to be petty about who had come to whom about what.
“And now that things are getting back to normal, that’s changing,” I said.
“How it’s gotta be,” he said. “You know that.”
“Uh-huh.” I sighed. “I mean, we can argue about the necessity, but I understand that’s how the powers that be want it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “What did you tell the uniforms?”
“Gang of guys in masks attacked us in the parking garage, threw some kind of acid at us. We can’t identify any of them.”
“What are the cameras going to show?” he asked.
“Given the amount of magic flung around, I’d be surprised if they survived at all, much less showed anything.”
He grunted. “Christ, Dresden. You got to start being more careful.”
“Guy was better than I thought,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
“It better not,” he said. “Give me the details.”
I told him about Tripp and Abernathy and Estevez and his enforcer. I elided the details of the Lurker.
“Estevez is being a pain in Marcone’s neck,” Stallings reported calmly. “You move into Marcone’s old place, and now you’re screwing with one of his enemies.”
“To be fair, Estevez screwed with me first,” I said. “I was just trying to help a guy help some kids.”
Stallings shook his head. “I’m getting more money than I used to. Which means more scrutiny than I used to. It’s going to limit what I can do for you.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”
“I hope what you’re doing is worth it, Dresden,” he said quietly.
“You get on Constance Abernathy’s bad side, she’s going to have the IRS suck the joy directly out of your veins.
” He considered for a moment and then nodded.
“I’m going to tell them to write you up for every traffic citation they can think of and cut you loose. ”
“Probably smart,” I said. “It won’t be long before they come at Tripp again. It could get real ugly, real fast.”
“People get hurt, it’s on guys like me,” Stallings said. “If he’d come out on the street in broad daylight, I’d have to mobilize a lot of new machinery. That could grind up a lot of people in the gears.”
“I know,” I said. “We’ll do this the old way. I’m going to get this done on the quiet.”
“You’d better,” Stallings said quietly. “The folks up the line from me got scared to death by the attack last summer. They know your name. They don’t like you.”
“Tell them I said, ‘You’re welcome.’”
Stallings snorted. “They’re playing gentle for now. All legal and aboveboard. But more incidents like this will change that. Murphy put her career on the line for you and lost it. I got kids. A grandkid on the way. I like you, Dresden. But I’m not going to commit professional suicide for you.”
“I hear you.”
“You always hear, Dresden. You don’t listen.” He rubbed at his face. “You need help with Estevez’s shooters, talk to me first.”
“They aren’t really my department,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
Stallings put his hands in his hip pockets to hide digging the heels of his palms into the small of his back. “Sure, you will.” He gave Tripp a dubious look. Tripp stood with a blanket around his shoulders, sipping coffee out of a cup that trembled in his hand. “Be smart.”
“Sounds hard. But I’ll try for lucky.”
Stallings shook his head and walked away. He spoke to the uniforms briefly, handed out a couple of business cards, and left.
The cops wrote me up for enough tickets to almost get my license taken away, and to definitely make me worry about money.
The Blue Beetle got towed off to my mechanic, Mike.
I signed my name several times and finished up just as Bear pulled up in the Munstermobile, an old hearse painted dark blue and purple with an icy-colored flame job on the front quarter panels.
There were dents on the car, as if it had driven through hail.
Scratches on the hood and a hole in the windshield, surrounded by the crazed crack lines of old glass, not the new safety stuff.
The car shone suspiciously clean, as if Bear had just washed it down, perhaps to wipe away bloodstains—and Fitz was sitting hunched in the front seat, no longer wearing Tripp’s suit but a black T-shirt and jeans instead, clutching an energy drink in his hand.
“Let’s go,” I said to Tripp. I nodded politely to the uniformed officers, and we got into the back seat of the hearse.
“Back to the castle,” I said to Bear. “Fitz, you okay?”
“You ever see The Birds?” my apprentice asked me.
“Sure,” I said as Bear pulled the car into traffic.
“I haven’t,” he said sourly. “And now I never, ever, ever will.”
“We got about four blocks before the birds came down,” Bear reported. “Crows. Big, nasty ones. Stronger than they should’ve been too. One of them got through the glass and went straight at Fitz.”
I frowned. “What’d you do, kid?”
Fitz flapped his arms around his head. “This, mostly. And screamed a lot. I was able to knock it onto the floor and stomp it to death. I’m fine.”
I nodded. “What came next?”
“Headed for the freeway,” Bear said. “It took a while, but eventually, we outran them.”
“Their feathers kept flying off,” Fitz said with a shudder. He gulped down more energy drink.
“A bunch of them just smashed themselves to death against the car,” Bear said. “Whatever this demon parasite is, it seems to have control of them to the point of self-destruction.”
“Hngh,” I said thoughtfully.
“Dresden,” Tripp said carefully.
“Yeah?”
“I, uh. I have to tell you something.”
I tilted my head warily. “What?”
“I, uh … kicked some cats.” He swallowed.
“While we were getting out of there. All these cats were running at us and trying to latch on to my clothes while I was leading you out. Bunch of them tried to sink claws in that coat of yours, and … well, you couldn’t see and I had to do something. So, I kicked them.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I heard it happening.”
“And that’s okay?” he asked.
“Helping me survive against a bunch of demon-possessed predators is fine by me, Tripp.”
He scrunched up his face in a frown. “But helping dogs, that was a big deal? How does that make sense? Do you just hate cats?”
“No!” I said. “I like cats. I have a cat. Just not psycho-zombie parasite-possessed cats determined to kill me horribly.”
“Oh,” Tripp said, somewhat mollified. “Well. You said I had to start with being honest. So.”
Bear looked at me in the rearview mirror and raised her eyebrows.
“Yeah, Tripp,” I said after a moment. “Yeah. That was the right call.”
“Okay,” Tripp said, and kept staring out the window.
“Cats,” I said. “Birds.” I shook my head. “Emilio managed to track us despite the potion. Must have realized that Tripp wasn’t in the car at some point. He’s better than I thought.”
“How good?” Fitz asked.
“Wizard material,” I said. “Or close to it, and getting spellslinging steroids off the Lurker, maybe. It’s supposed to be a blood-drinker, and blood makes powerful fuel for black magic.”
Fitz frowned. “You can get wizard steroids?”
“You can,” I said. “But like the regular kind, they very often aren’t good for you.”
“Why?”
“Nature of the beast, kid,” I said. “There’s never a shortcut to anything that doesn’t come with a price.”
“Well, yeah,” Fitz said. “But it makes you more powerful? So you can deal with guys like Emilio, right?”
“More powerful the dark side is not,” I said, in a gravelly Yoda voice. “Only quicker, easier, more seductive.”
“God, you are so Gen X, it hurts,” Fitz said. “But suppose he kills you, and then it’s up to me to deal with him. I’m supposed to come back in twenty years and take him on then?”
“One, this chump isn’t going to kill me,” I said. “Two, no, you go to Ramirez at the White Council and point the Wardens at Emilio. They’d have a holiday taking him out.”
“So, how come you don’t do that?” Fitz demanded.
“Because this is my town,” I said. “I’ll deal with it myself, not call in the sledgehammer squad who might crush God knows what else while they’re smashing one warlock.
Besides, Ilyana is in charge of this territory now, and she’d find some way to blame me for it.
Best way to avoid that is to take him down before they even know it’s a problem. ”
“You didn’t tell them about that thing,” Tripp said. “The thing that came out of the vent.”
I grunted.
“What happened?” Bear asked.
“Emilio vomited up a piece of the Lurker,” I said. “Like this long, spongy, bloody snake. It tried to get in my mouth.”
“Ewg,” Fitz said. “Gah. That’s disgusting.”
Bear’s gaze sharpened. “Did it? Any of it? Any at all?”
I shook my head. “No. No, we got it into the sun before it could.” I frowned. “Gotta be how it spreads, though. You think it can grow once it gets in you?”
“Maybe,” Bear said. “If it’s a hemophagic parasite, it could start by taking some of the host’s blood. Start asserting control and make the host thirsty for more so it can grow.”
“That’s gross also,” Fitz noted, and swigged energy drink. “Hey, maybe that’s where chupacabras come from. That thing gets into them and they have to start drinking blood.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Could be. Look, if I start craving extra salty tomato juice, I’ll be sure to let you know,” I said. “We need to be in the castle soonest. This is looking to be a fairly major entity. I can keep it out of there, buy us some time to think.”
“What are we going to do?” Tripp asked.
“That’s what I’ve got to think about,” I said grumpily. “I haven’t taken this seriously enough from the start.”
Bear nodded and pressed the accelerator smoothly, and the Munstermobile growled steadily down the streets.